Pat Conroy

Pat Conroy drew on student life, teaching and his military family in novels and memoirs rooted in the American South. Born in Atlanta in 1945, he was the eldest of seven children and moved frequently as his Marine father received new postings. Conroy attended The Citadel, then taught at Beaufort High School and in a one-room school on Daufuskie Island. His first book, The Boo, paid tribute to Citadel mentor Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, while the island year informed The Water Is Wide. His cadet experience later helped shape The Lords of Discipline. Beach Music, published in 1995, was his sixth book and moved between South Carolina and Rome. Conroy worked on the screenplay for The Prince of Tides and shared its Academy Award nomination for adapted screenplay. Later nonfiction included the basketball memoir My Losing Season and The Pat Conroy Cookbook, which joined recipes to recollections. He died in March 2016 at seventy, leaving eleven books according to his publisher.